A drug is a natural or synthetic substance which affects the structure and function of the body when taken. There are two types of drugs; legal drugs and illegal drugs. Helpful drugs are called legal drugs or medicine. Legal drugs are used in the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of a disease or relief of discomfort. Although they are supposed to be helpful, they can be harmful and addictive if misused. An example of a helpful drug is morphine. Morphine is used as a pain reliever, however, if misused, one can become addicted to it and overdose.
A harmful drug is an illegal drug that does not help the body at all. An example of a harmful drug is cocaine, which is illegal. Cocaine produces a state of euphoria, therefore when taken repeatedly, one can become addicted and dependant on it. Although harmful drugs are bad for the body, humans still ingest them because they bring ‘mental relief’. Many people take drugs because of stress and household problems. Yes, these drugs help people to cope with their problems, but at what cost?
In M.T. Anderson’s Feed, which is about the adventures of a group of teenagers that live in a near-future version of America. In this society, science has advanced far enough to enable touristy space travel and the majority of the population to have what is called "the feed,". The Feed is basically an advanced form of the Internet implanted directly into people's heads. The Feed enables people to have limitless information in their brains. It also allows the user’s to have access to every social networking site you can possibly think of—at the tip of a neuron. It is very vital to survival, just like a lung. Anyway, like in every good story, there must be a conflict. In the story, the group of teenagers end up having their Feed’s hacked while on the moon for spring break, thus causing their lives to somewhat turn upside down? Well only for Violet and Titus. Like normal teenagers, everyone else just forgets that they got hacked and continued with their normal lives, which consists of taking MAL. Sounds cool, right?
In this novel, MAL is basically what we call weed in our world. It is very popular among teenagers and almost everyone does it. It is what everyone does at parties, and these teenagers party a lot. On one particular night, the gang are at a party yet again. In the book, the author states “On the way down, we passed the bedrooms again. The party had picked up. The doors were open now, and on some beds, there were people making out, and on some others, people were in mal, their legs and arms all twitching and their heads rocking back and forth, and someone was puking in a roll-top desk and trying to roll the top down to hide it”(Anderson 197). These teenagers are doing what normal teenagers do at parties. It’s not a party without people being high or making out, right? Personally, I've never been to a party with friends where there was no drugs or people humping each other like cave people. Anyway, MAL is very similar to weed, yet different at the same time. It is similar because it causes people to forget about reality. Also, the symptoms of using MAL are similar to the symptoms of using weed as people lose coordination over certain body parts. MAL and weed are different because of the way of usage. In reality, people get high off of weed by rolling it, lighting it up, and then smoking it, however in this world, people get high off of MAL by just going on websites.
As the party progress, Violet, one of the characters starts to spaz out and Titus, another character, doesn’t know what’s wrong.”She had broken somehow, and she was broken, and, oh fuck, she was shaking and her eyes were all white and rolling around, and she couldn't talk anymore.She was choking. I grabbed her and tried to wrap my arms around her. There was a long line of spit coming out of her mouth. Her legs were pumping up and down. She was broken. She was completely broken. I was crying and saying to call an ambulance and people were like, fuck no, is she in mal?( Anderson 202). From this, I assume that her symptoms were similar to the side effects of Mal because everyone thought she was reacting to it. Honestly, Mal sounds scary if it can cause that to happen to a person. Even though it could be that scary, why are these teenagers still doing it? Shouldn’t it be illegal? It would be easy to restrain people from taking Mal in this world because one can easily block the Mal website or shut it down.
In our world, weed is illegal. I do not know if anyone has died from overdosing on weed, but I do know that the side effects of taking weed are pretty serious. Some of the side effects of taking weed are altered senses, altered sense of time, changes in mood, impaired body movement, difficulty with thinking and problem-solving, impaired memory, temporary hallucinations—sensations and images that seem real though they are not, and temporary paranoia—extreme and unreasonable distrust of others. Not everyone experiences all of these symptoms because it differs from person to person. Although these side effects are so serious, people still smoke weed knowing the risk. They do not even care about breaking the law. I guess the feeling of taking weed is worth the risk.
Works Cited
Anderson, M. T. Feed. London: Walker, 2013. Print
Bhagwandin. A
Word Count: 935
No comments:
Post a Comment